Facebook began rolling out a facial recognition technology in 2017 which recognizes you even in untagged photographs. After making the feature available in 2019, Facebook’s move to shut down the face recognition system on its platform came as a surprise to most. According to the company, this move is part of the company’s attempts to minimize the use of facial recognition in its products.
In the coming weeks, Facebook will shut down its facial recognition programme. Users who have opted in to have their faces recognized in photographs and videos will no longer be automatically identified by the social media site. Furthermore, the company claims to be removing the face recognition template that was previously used to identify users.
The end of Facebook’s facial recognition system will influence the Automatic Alt Text (AAT) mechanism. AAT creates descriptions of images for visually challenged persons and is used in 4% of photos. While AAT will still be able to count how many people are in a picture, it will no longer be able to identify them using facial recognition.
This is the first major change to Facebook since the company’s latest shift to a new name, Meta. Facebook wants to deploy facial recognition technology in limited use cases in the future, such as gaining access to a closed account and verifying identity in financial goods to prevent fraud and impersonation.
Post Your Comments